Penetration and power

This paper analyses the ways in which it is possible to imagine the relationship between sexual penetration and the expression of power. Taking the particular instance of a penetrative act in the US gay porn film Hard at Work, it applies a series of critical approaches in an attempt to make sense of perceived power relations in that text. Equations of power and activity, power and physical strength, power and the possession of a penis, power and the ability to gaze and power and the control of discourse are all considered and found to be inadequate to the task. The paper finally suggests that in order to usefully discuss relations of power in sexual acts, it is necessary to accept the radical reconceptualisation of power suggested by Mark Gibson, and begin to understand it not as an objective, measurable and real quantity, but as an effect of the interpretation of particular situations.

Keeping House : a novel and novel companion

The creative work of this study is a novel-length work of literary fiction called Keeping House (published as Grace's Table, by University of Queensland Press, April 2014). Grace has not had twelve people at her table for a long time. Hers isn't the kind of family who share regular Sunday meals. As Grace prepares the feast, she reflects on her life, her marriage and her friendships. When the three generations of her family come together, simmering tensions from the past threaten to boil over. The one thing that no one can talk about is the one thing that no one can forget. Grace's Table is a moving and often funny novel using food as a language to explore the power of memory and the family rituals that define us. The exegetical component of this study does not adhere to traditional research pedagogies. Instead, it follows the model of what the literature describes as fictocriticism. It is the intention that the exegesis be read as a hybrid genre; one that combines creative practice and theory and blurs the boundaries between philosophy and fiction. In offering itself as an alternative to the exegetical canon it provides a model for the multiplicity of knowledge production suited to the discipline of practice-led research. The exegesis mirrors structural elements of the creative work by inviting twelve guests into the domestic space of the novel to share a meal. The guests, chosen for their diverse thinking, enable examination of the various agents of power involved in the delivery of food. Their ideas cross genders, ages and time periods; their motivations and opinions often collide. Some are more concerned with the spatial politics of where food is consumed, others with its actual preparation and consumption. Each, however, provides a series of creative reflective conversations throughout the meal which help to answer the research question: How can disempowered women take authority within their domestic space? Michel de Certeau must defend his "operational tactics" or "art of the weak" 1 as a means by which women can subvert the colonisation of their domestic space against Michel Foucault's ideas about the functions of a "disciplinary apparatus". 2 Erving Goffman argues that the success of de Certeau's "tactics" depends upon his theories of "performance" and "masquerade" 3; a claim de Certeau refutes. Doreen Massey and the author combine forces in arguing for space, time and politics to be seen as interconnected, non-static and often contested. The author calls for identity, or sense of self, to be considered a further dimension which impacts on the function of spatial models. Yu-Fi Tuan speaks of the intimacy of kitchens; Gaston Bachelard the power of daydreams; and Jean Anthelme Brillat-Savarin gives the reader a taste of the nourishing arts. Roland Barthes forces the author to reconsider her function as a writer and her understanding of the reader's relationship with a text. Fictional characters from two texts have a place at the table – Marian from The Edible Woman by Margaret Atwood 4 and Lilian from Lilian's Story by Kate Grenville. 5 Each explores how they successfully subverted expectations of their gender. The author interprets and applies elements of the conversations to support Grace's tactics in the novel as well as those related to her own creative research practice. Grace serves her guests, reflecting on what is said and how it relates to her story. Over coffee, the two come together to examine what each has learned.

Power through influence : the evolution of arts management in Australia

The purpose of this paper is to frame effective models of arts management for Australia in the nineties and beyond based on an analysis of historical practices. The evolutionary process of government subvention of the arts through non-profit arts organisations provides a clear statement of the role of power and influence. In particular the ascendancy of arts organisations and their management constitute a background against which to study other non-profit corporations.

Governing depression in Australian legal education : power, psychology and advanced liberal government

Legal educators in Australia have increasingly become concerned with the mental health of law students. The apparent risk posed by legal education to a student’s mental health has led to the deployment of a variety of measures to address these problems. By exploring these measures as productive power relations attempting to shape law students, this paper outlines how this government of depression is achieved, and the potential costs of these power relations. It examines one central Australian text offering advice about how students and law student societies can address depression, and argues that doing so not only involves students adopting particular practices of self-government to shape their legal personae, but also relies on an extension of the power relations of legal education. In addition, this paper will link this advice — which privatises the issue of depression, responsibilises individuals and communities, privileges psychological expertise, and seeks to govern ‘at a distance’ — to broader forms of social administration that presently characterise many Western societies. Doing so allows legal educators to reflect on the effects of their attempts to govern depression, and to consider new ways of altering the power relations of legal education.

Validating the is-impact model in the Malaysian public sector

This research is one of several ongoing studies conducted within the IT Professional Services (ITPS) research programme at Queensland University of Technology (QUT). In 2003, ITPS introduced the IS-Impact model, a measurement model for measuring information systems success from the viewpoint of multiple stakeholders. The model, along with its instrument, is robust, simple, yet generalisable, and yields results that are comparable across time, stakeholders, different systems and system contexts. The IS-Impact model is defined as “a measure at a point in time, of the stream of net benefits from the Information System (IS), to date and anticipated, as perceived by all key-user-groups”. The model represents four dimensions, which are ‘Individual Impact’, ‘Organizational Impact’, ‘Information Quality’ and ‘System Quality’. The two Impact dimensions measure the up-to-date impact of the evaluated system, while the remaining two Quality dimensions act as proxies for probable future impacts (Gable, Sedera & Chan, 2008). To fulfil the goal of ITPS, “to develop the most widely employed model” this research re-validates and extends the IS-Impact model in a new context. This method/context-extension research aims to test the generalisability of the model by addressing known limitations of the model. One of the limitations of the model relates to the extent of external validity of the model. In order to gain wide acceptance, a model should be consistent and work well in different contexts. The IS-Impact model, however, was only validated in the Australian context, and packaged software was chosen as the IS understudy. Thus, this study is concerned with whether the model can be applied in another different context. Aiming for a robust and standardised measurement model that can be used across different contexts, this research re-validates and extends the IS-Impact model and its instrument to public sector organisations in Malaysia. The overarching research question (managerial question) of this research is “How can public sector organisations in Malaysia measure the impact of information systems systematically and effectively?” With two main objectives, the managerial question is broken down into two specific research questions. The first research question addresses the applicability (relevance) of the dimensions and measures of the IS-Impact model in the Malaysian context. Moreover, this research question addresses the completeness of the model in the new context. Initially, this research assumes that the dimensions and measures of the IS-Impact model are sufficient for the new context. However, some IS researchers suggest that the selection of measures needs to be done purposely for different contextual settings (DeLone & McLean, 1992, Rai, Lang & Welker, 2002). Thus, the first research question is as follows, “Is the IS-Impact model complete for measuring the impact of IS in Malaysian public sector organisations?” [RQ1]. The IS-Impact model is a multidimensional model that consists of four dimensions or constructs. Each dimension is represented by formative measures or indicators. Formative measures are known as composite variables because these measures make up or form the construct, or, in this case, the dimension in the IS-Impact model. These formative measures define different aspects of the dimension, thus, a measurement model of this kind needs to be tested not just on the structural relationship between the constructs but also the validity of each measure. In a previous study, the IS-Impact model was validated using formative validation techniques, as proposed in the literature (i.e., Diamantopoulos and Winklhofer, 2001, Diamantopoulos and Siguaw, 2006, Petter, Straub and Rai, 2007). However, there is potential for improving the validation testing of the model by adding more criterion or dependent variables. This includes identifying a consequence of the IS-Impact construct for the purpose of validation. Moreover, a different approach is employed in this research, whereby the validity of the model is tested using the Partial Least Squares (PLS) method, a component-based structural equation modelling (SEM) technique. Thus, the second research question addresses the construct validation of the IS-Impact model; “Is the IS-Impact model valid as a multidimensional formative construct?” [RQ2]. This study employs two rounds of surveys, each having a different and specific aim. The first is qualitative and exploratory, aiming to investigate the applicability and sufficiency of the IS-Impact dimensions and measures in the new context. This survey was conducted in a state government in Malaysia. A total of 77 valid responses were received, yielding 278 impact statements. The results from the qualitative analysis demonstrate the applicability of most of the IS-Impact measures. The analysis also shows a significant new measure having emerged from the context. This new measure was added as one of the System Quality measures. The second survey is a quantitative survey that aims to operationalise the measures identified from the qualitative analysis and rigorously validate the model. This survey was conducted in four state governments (including the state government that was involved in the first survey). A total of 254 valid responses were used in the data analysis. Data was analysed using structural equation modelling techniques, following the guidelines for formative construct validation, to test the validity and reliability of the constructs in the model. This study is the first research that extends the complete IS-Impact model in a new context that is different in terms of nationality, language and the type of information system (IS). The main contribution of this research is to present a comprehensive, up-to-date IS-Impact model, which has been validated in the new context. The study has accomplished its purpose of testing the generalisability of the IS-Impact model and continuing the IS evaluation research by extending it in the Malaysian context. A further contribution is a validated Malaysian language IS-Impact measurement instrument. It is hoped that the validated Malaysian IS-Impact instrument will encourage related IS research in Malaysia, and that the demonstrated model validity and generalisability will encourage a cumulative tradition of research previously not possible. The study entailed several methodological improvements on prior work, including: (1) new criterion measures for the overall IS-Impact construct employed in ‘identification through measurement relations’; (2) a stronger, multi-item ‘Satisfaction’ construct, employed in ‘identification through structural relations’; (3) an alternative version of the main survey instrument in which items are randomized (rather than blocked) for comparison with the main survey data, in attention to possible common method variance (no significant differences between these two survey instruments were observed); (4) demonstrates a validation process of formative indexes of a multidimensional, second-order construct (existing examples mostly involved unidimensional constructs); (5) testing the presence of suppressor effects that influence the significance of some measures and dimensions in the model; and (6) demonstrates the effect of an imbalanced number of measures within a construct to the contribution power of each dimension in a multidimensional model.

Public relations management in organisations

Chapter aims By the end of your study of this chapter, you should be able to: - See public relations as a link between organisations and their environments - Use systems theory to guide your understanding and practical application of public relations - Understand the make up of a public relations management team within an organisation - Identify and understand how a range of internal forces including culture, and power affect the practice of public relations - Identify and understand how a range of external forces including conflict, activism and corporate social responsibility affect the practice of public relations.

Power in legal education : a (new) critical and analytical approach

This article explores power within legal education scholarship. It suggests that power relations are not effectively reflected on within this scholarship, and it provokes legal educators to consider power more explicitly and effectively. It then outlines in-depth a conceptual and methodological approach based on Michel Foucault’s concept of ‘governmentality’ to assist in such an analysis. By detailing the conceptual moves required in order to research power in legal education more effectively, this article seeks to stimulate new reflection and thought about the practice and scholarship of legal education, and allow for political interventions to become more ethically sensitive and potentially more effective.

Established-outsider relations and fear of crime in mining towns

Using Elias and Scotson's (1994) account of established-outsider relations, this article examines how the organisational capacity of specific social groups is significant in determining the quality of crime-talk in isolated and rural settings. In particular, social 'oldness' and notions of what constitutes 'community' are significant in determining what activities and individuals are salient within crime-talk. Individual and gorup interviews, conducted in a West Australian mining town, revealed how crime-talk is an artefact of specific social figurations and the relative ability of groups to act as cohesive and integrated networks. We argue that anxieties regarding crime are a product of specific social figurations and the shifting power ratios of groups within such figurations.

Buy, boycott or blog : exploring online consumer power to share, discuss and distribute controversial advertising messages

The availability of new media as a universal communication tool has an impact on the power of the general public to comment on a variety of issues. This paper examines this increase in consumer power with respect to bloggers. The research context is controversial advertising, and specifically Tourism Australia’s “Where the bloody hell are you?” campaign. By utilising Denegri-Knott’s (2006) four on-line power strategies, a content analysis of weblogs reveals that consumers are distributing information, opinion and even banned advertising material, thereby forming power hubs of like-minded people, with the potential to become online pressure groups. The consequences and implications of this augmented power on regulators, advertisers and bloggers are explored. The findings contribute to the understanding of blogs as a new communication platform and bloggers as a new demographic of activists in the process of advertising.

The Authority of Influence : Women and Power in Burmese History

This book explores the relationship between gender and power in Burmese history from pre-colonial times to the present day and aims to identify the sources, nature and limitations of women’s power. The study takes as its starting point the apparent contradiction that, though Burmese women historically enjoyed relatively high social status and economic influence, for the most part they remained conspicuously absent from positions of authority in formal religious, social and political institutions. The book thus examines the concept of ‘family’ in Burmese political culture, and reveals how some women were able to gain political influence through their familial connections with powerful men, even while cultural models of ‘correct’ female behaviour prevented most women from attaining official positions of political authority. The study also considers how various influences – Buddhism, colonialism, nationalism, modernisation and militarism – shaped Burmese concepts of gender and power, with important implications for how women were able to exercise social, economic and political influence. The book explores how the effects of prolonged armed conflict, economic isolation and political oppression have constrained opportunities for women to attain power in contemporary Burma, and examines opportunities opened up by the pro-democracy movement and recent focus on women's issues and rights for women to exercise influence both inside Burma and in exile. Using an interdisciplinary approach that draws on feminist, anthropological and social science discourses, placing them within an historical framework, the author offers a broad understanding of how power is obtained and exercised in Burma in order to reassess historical representations of Burmese women and so provide a more comprehensive and inclusive understanding of power relations in historical and contemporary Burma.

Who's afraid of China? The challenge of Chinese soft power [Review]

What role does China play in Western imagination and how does it affect Western selfconceptions? The rise of China as an alternative model to Western liberalism has created a fear that developing countries will stray from Western standards of democracy, transparency and human rights. However, such fears often say as much about those who hold them as they do about China itself. In this short and easily readable book Barr holds a mirror to Sino–Western relations in order to better understand how the West’s own past, hopes and fears shape the way it thinks about and engages with China. Focusing on three key areas—models of development, soft power and ethnocentrism—he argues that the rise of China ‘hits a nerve in the Western psyche . . . because its actions reflect the West’s own ambivalence to modernity and uncertainty over the proper role and limits of state power’ (p. 21). To make his point, Barr focuses on China’s soft power and the connections between China’s domestic politics and its attempts to shape its image internationally...

Menopause as a long-term risk to health : implications of general practitioner accounts of prevention for women’s choice and decision-making

Over the past two decades medical researchers and modernist feminist researchers have contested the meaning of menopause. In this article we examine various meanings of menopause in major medical and feminist literature and the construction of menopause in a semi-structured interview study of general practitioners in rural South Australia. Three discursive themes are identified in these interviews; (i) the hormonal menopause – symptoms, risk, prevention; (ii) the informed menopausal woman; and (iii) decision-making and hormone replacement therapy. By using the discourse of prevention, general practitioners construct menopause in relation to women's health care choices, empowerment and autonomy. We argue that the ways in which these concepts are deployed by general practitioners in this study produces and constrains the options available to women. The implications of these general practitioner accounts are discussed in relation to the proposition that medical and feminist descriptions of menopause posit alternative but equally-fixed truths about menopause and their relationship with the range of responses available to women at menopause. Social and cultural explanations of disease causality (c.f.Germov 1998, Hardey 1998) are absent from the new menopause despite their being an integral part of the framework of the women's health movement and health promotion drawn on by these general practitioners. Further, the shift of responsibility for health to the individual woman reinforces practice claims to empower women, but oversimplifies power relations and constructs menopause as a site of self-surveillance. The use of concepts from the women's health movement and health promotion have nevertheless created change in both the positioning of women as having ‘choices’ and the positioning of some general practitioners in terms of greater information provision to women and an attention to the woman's autonomy. In conclusion, we propose that a new menopause has evolved from a discursive shift in medicine and that there exists within this new configuration, claiming the empowerment of women as an integral part of health care for menopause, the possibility for change in medical practice which will broaden, strengthen, and maintain this position.

Knowledge is not power, but it’s a start : what young people know about their rights and obligations in employment

Scholarship addressing the employment concerns of school age workers has identified a number of areas of vulnerability. Prominent among these is that young workers have insufficient knowledge of their rights in employment, yet the extent of this knowledge has not previously been quantified. This study explores areas of strength and deficit in awareness of employment rights and obligations in a sample of 892 young people in Australian high schools. The findings demonstrate that, despite part-time work being a majority experience for school students, young Australians know relatively little of their employment rights. The conclusions underscore the need for education strategies that inform young people prior to and in the very early stages of their working lives.

The idea of women : representations of power in the work of Charles Bukowski

This thesis is a comparative textual analysis of Charles Bukowski's representations of power in relation to the idea of women. The exegesis explores Bukowski's idea of women and power as exemplified by the representational differences between his short stories for Hustler Magazine and his novel Women. The creative piece, a novel, "Many a Broken Hearted Woman" informed and was informed by this research.

The Australian mining industry and the ideal mining woman : mobilizing a public business case for gender equality

Despite ongoing ‘boom’ conditions in the Australian mining industry, women remain substantially and unevenly under-represented in the sector, as is the case in other resource-dependent countries. Building on the literature critiquing business-case rationales and strategies as a means to achieve women’s equality in the workplace, we examine the business case for employing more women as advanced by the Australian mining industry. Specifically, we apply a discourse analysis to seven substantial, publically-available documents produced by the industry’s national and state peak organizations between 2005 and 2013. Our study makes two contributions. First, we map the features of the business case at the sectoral rather than firm or workplace level and examine its public mobilization. Second, we identify the construction and deployment of a normative identity – ‘the ideal mining woman’ – as a key outcome of this business-case discourse. Crucially, women are therein positioned as individually responsible for gender equality in the workplace.